In my article, I propose to discuss constructivism and realism in terms of actions instead of doing that in a usual way, in terms of theories, philosophers or general positions. To enable this, I offer two conceptual tools. First, I use modified model of four types of knowledge introduced by Andrzej Zybertowicz. It approaches any knowledge-building process as a cultural game, and recognizes reproduction, discovery, redefinition, and design of a new game. Second, I use Stanislaw Lem’s model of three types of geniuses. I illustrate my approach briefly using examples from Plato, Spinoza and Berkeley.

Open peer commentary on the article “Missing Colors: The Enactivist Approach to Perception” by Adrián G. Palacios, María-José Escobar & Esteban Céspedes. Upshot: The target article discusses the influence of the enactivist account of perception in computer science, beyond subjectivism and objectivism. I suggest going one step further and introduce our VirtualEnaction platform, proposing a federative systemic view for brain-body-environment interaction for this analysis.

Open peer commentary on the article “Enaction as a Lived Experience: Towards a Radical Neurophenomenology” by Claire Petitmengin. Upshot: Why has the neurophenomenological approach not been adopted as a common and even obligatory tool in the study of consciousness? I suggest that the problem with the neurophenomenological approach is its effectiveness on the one hand and its almost impossible demands from the scientist on the other: One cannot accept the neurophenomenological approach without rejecting not only the paradigm of cognitive science, but the scientific paradigm as a whole.

Open peer commentary on the article “From Problem Solving to Problem Posing, and from Strategies to Laying Down a Path in Solving: Taking Varela’s Ideas to Mathematics Education Research” by Jérôme Proulx & Jean-François Maheux. Upshot: The aim of this commentary is to extend the work of Proulx and Maheux to include consideration of the teacher-observer whose role (in part) in the mathematics classroom is to ensure that curriculum goals are being met.

Upshot: We respond to three main challenges that the commentaries have raised. Firstly, we clarify our misunderstood intention of introducing a newcomer to the neurophenomenological family. Rather, we situate our approach under the broader umbrella of phenomenology. Secondly, we argue that from our empirical position it is questionable that the strategy we pursued in the target article left the black box of consciousness completely closed. Thirdly, we argue that the subjective fluctuations that may appear as outcomes in an experimental paradigm are not to be considered with a resigned attitude but as valuable information to work with. We conclude our response by agreeing with the concerns of two of the commentators about extending the perspectives and plurality of the methods to investigate the explanatory gap problem.

Context: The integration of data measured in first- and third-person frameworks is a challenge that becomes more prominent as we attempt to refine the ties between the dimensions we assume to be objective and our experience itself. As a result, cognitive science has been a target for criticism from the epistemological and methodological point of view, which has resulted in the emergence of new approaches. Neurophenomenology has been proposed as a means to address these limitations. The methodological application of this discipline, even in its mildest form, enriches the methodology typically used in cognitive sciences. Problem: Nowadays psychological studies are difficult to replicate. As a way to achieve replication of results published in a previous study in order to develop a methodological adaptation suitable for electroencephalographic (EEG) measurements in a subsequent experiment, first-person accounts from the participants in our pilot study were included in the experiment construction. This study’s objective is to show the benefit of including a mild-neurophenomenology-inspired approach in the adaptation from an original paradigm, which requires, foremost, the ability to replicate the original results. Method: Interviews with open and semi-structured questions were carried out at the end of an Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT. The first-person reports, together with the behavioral outcomes of each pilot, were taken into account for the development of the next piloting phase until replication of the original results was achieved, and the final experimental design was elaborated. Results: A sequence of four pilots, where the integration of third- and first-person information derived from subjects’ behavior and reported experiences while carrying them out rendered the behavioral replication we sought to achieve, providing support for a first-person enriched cognitive science paradigm. Implications: Including first-person accounts systematically during the development and performance of classic cognitive paradigms ensures that those paradigms are measuring what they claim to measure. This is the next logical step to improve replication rates, to refine the explanation of the results and avoid confounding third-person data interpretation. Constructivist content: Including first-person experiences and acknowledging the active role that participants’ experiences regarding the paradigm had in the modeling of its final version is in concordance with a constructivist standing.

The concept of “autonomy,” once at the core of the original enactivist proposal in The Embodied Mind (Varela et al. in The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991), is nowadays ignored or neglected by some of the most prominent contemporary enactivists approaches. Theories of autonomy, however, come to fill a theoretical gap that sensorimotor accounts of cognition cannot ignore: they provide a naturalized account of normativity and the resources to ground the identity of a cognitive subject in its specific mode of organization. There are, however, good reasons for the contemporary neglect of autonomy as a relevant concept for enactivism. On the one hand, the concept of autonomy has too often been assimilated into autopoiesis (or basic autonomy in the molecular or biological realm) and the implications are not always clear for a dynamical sensorimotor approach to cognitive science. On the other hand, the foundational enactivist proposal displays a metaphysical tension between the concept of operational closure (autonomy), deployed as constitutive, and that of structural coupling (sensorimotor dynamics); making it hard to reconcile with the claim that experience is sensorimotorly constituted. This tension is particularly apparent when Varela et al. propose Bittorio (a 1D cellular automata) as a model of the operational closure of the nervous system as it fails to satisfy the required conditions for a sensorimotor constitution of experience. It is, however, possible to solve these problems by re-considering autonomy at the level of sensorimotor neurodynamics. Two recent robotic simulation models are used for this task, illustrating the notion of strong sensorimotor dependency of neurodynamic patterns, and their networked intertwinement. The concept of habit is proposed as an enactivist building block for cognitive theorizing, re-conceptualizing mental life as a habit ecology, tied within an agent’s behaviour generating mechanism in coordination with its environment. Norms can be naturalized in terms of dynamic, interactively self-sustaining, coherentism. This conception of autonomous sensorimotor agency is put in contrast with those enactive approaches that reject autonomy or neglect the theoretical resources it has to offer for the project of naturalizing minds.

Open peer commentary on the article “Enaction as a Lived Experience: Towards a Radical Neurophenomenology” by Claire Petitmengin. Upshot: The neurophenomenological project is too ambitious technically, but highly appealing on the philosophical level, as can be learned from the extremely high ratio between theoretical and empirical work concerning neurophenomenology accumulated thus far. While “radical” neurophenomenology could possibly create, in highly unique projects, “mutual generative constraints,” will the hard problem be dissolved? I argue that although using micro phenomenology, as long as experimental designs inspired by front-loading phenomenological insights are reviewed by the regular scientific mind, the question of validating the phenomenology with objective measures remains, and will keep blocking the outbreak in this promising field. Since “we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them,” it is timely for the scientific community to practice an attitude shift.

Open peer commentary on the article “The Past, Present and Future of Time-Consciousness: From Husserl to Varela and Beyond” by Shaun Gallagher. Upshot: A triple schematic connection between affect, action and time-consciousness can be represented as follows: “affect → action (anticipation) → time-consciousness (protention.” Two questions are raised: what is the exact directional causality between these three phenomena? And does empirical evidence from the study of certain conditions where the time-experience, affect and action were shown to be transformed support the proposed connections? While psychiatric disorders show a similar schematic causation between these phenomena, this is not the case for meditation. One possible explanation of the inconsistency is the question of the interplay in affect between arousal and valence.

Open peer commentary on the article “Enaction as a Lived Experience: Towards a Radical Neurophenomenology” by Claire Petitmengin. Upshot: Petitmengin’s strategy of dissolution of the “hard problem” of consciousness is shown to rely on some radical phenomenological premises that are listed and analyzed. It presupposes a starting point of research in a state of epoché (or suspension of judgment); it unfolds into a participatory conception of truth; and it ends in a quest for non-dual pristine experience. Each one of these moves is endorsed and amplified.